Troubleshooting Techniques: Introduction

When something breaks somebody needs to fix it and when they do gratitude is typically sent in that person’s direction. The very nature of engineering is to create new things. During this process, the creations are inevitably passed around to different people during design, prototyping, testing, and manufacturing phases. As products progress through these steps (or whatever sequence is used in your specific situation), it is rare that everything goes smoothly.

As such, something will break along the way, somebody will receive accolades for fixing them, and those kudos will appear on that persons performance evaluation. It might as well be you. Few things enhance a work reputation like being the person who fixes broken stuff. This series examines the essential attributes of successful troubleshooting as well as provides a common set of steps to increase the odds of finding a solution as quickly as possible.

• Introduction


• Wrath of Khan Anecdote


• Knowledge, Access, and Creativity


• Step 1 - Were all the instructions followed correctly?


• Step 2 - Is this happening here or is it happening everywhere?


• Step 3 - Something changed recently, what is it?


• Step 4 - What isn’t broken versus what is?


• Step 5 - It’s fixed, now what?


• Final Thoughts

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